how many three to four month long new vehicle service problems populate your dealership's service department? And if you had one (or some) like that and it really was the best handled of many in that cohort how would have been your dealings and relationship with the mfr?
Well, since we don't do custom paint we wouldn't have had a paint issue for this long once they mfr decided there was an issue. That may have taken some time. I recall when GM had the water based color issues, it took them awhile to make the call that they would offer a solution. Jeep which I had also had the issue.
Today, we make the call on paint at the local level, each mfr has there own guidelines, but any car in the first year of ownership would have been handled immediately. Complete repaints would have become an issue for owners on cars I imagine and don't even want to think about handling the numbers HD had on this. Bolt on tins makes a big difference as it doesn't impact the value like a total repaint on a car would.
Mechanically however, there are cars that never get fixed and that's why we have lemon law. This would be a better comparison to the milk dud cases IMHO, in that the dealer drives whether the issue is resolved as a "buy back" or the customer is forced to take it to the state for lemon law.
We do more buy backs by far than lemon law cases. Why put the customer through it? There are always situations that do not warrant a buy back and the customer feels they do, in those "very rare" situations the dealer and customer have to agree to disagree and proceed with lemon law. I do not recall ever having one of those in the 21 years I have been the dealer. Again, why put the customer through that.
I like to think that every dealer attempts to service customers equally, but I know that is not the case in the auto business or the real world. I only wish there was an effective way for customers to be able to realize the value in the "dealership's product" as well as the mfr's product when they are negotiating a purchase. We make every attempt to sell ourselves, but some people would rather save a few dollars that in the long run cost them a lot of stress and heartache.
Anyway, to sum up an answer, three or four month problems do rarely occur. When they do, they are not always acknowledge quickly by the mfr. If they occur in these numbers I would say it often would take three months for a solution to be engineered, another couple to launch it and another couple to get it to all of the customers.
That's the reason we have Federally mandated recalls, mfr's would rather have an internal "service action" than a mandated recall. They work as quickly as possible to resolve issues but still we end up with recalls.
So the next time you see a mid-80's GM or Chrysler product (not sure if others had it) rolling down the road with the primer showing where the paint has peeled off, just think HD owners are out there riding their "milk duds" and they don't even know they could have a black bike with crimson hidden in it or a watermelon that looks like it should.
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Topic: Paint Problems 2006 (Read 207299 times)